Hitchens Argues for Saving Julian Assange
Analyzing the article
Our Analysis: 4 Fallacies
The Americans would laugh in our faces if we tried to seize a man who has broken no law - like they are with Julian Assange...
Once they have hold of him, there is every chance that he will be buried alive in some federal dungeon, quite possibly until he dies. 1 We would not allow Russia, or Saudi Arabia, or Turkey to behave like this.
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US officials have 2 argued that America's First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech there, does not apply to Mr Assange. Mike Pompeo, then director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said on April 13, 2017, of Mr Assange and his WikiLeaks colleagues: 'They have pretended that America's First Amendment freedoms shield them from justice. They may have believed that, but they are wrong.'
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3 If the extradition goes ahead, no non-American journalist, who receives confidential information about US government activities from a whistleblower, will ever again be safe from being marched off in handcuffs to the USA.
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For me, it is a question of 4 whether this is a proper sovereign country governed by its own laws, or a servile satellite, bearing the same relation to Washington DC as the Warsaw Pact states once bore to Moscow. ...we all have an interest in saving Julian Assange.
- Peter Hitchens makes some reasonable points in arguing Assange should not be extradited to the US, but commits some fallacies along the way, including straw man and slippery slope.
- False equivalence • The text compares the US seizing Assange to Russia, Saudi Arabia, or Turkey seizing someone whom they want to imprison. This makes the US action seem as bad as what authoritarian regimes might do, which is a questionable equivalence. Also, none of these other countries have the same kind of relationship to Britain that the US does.
- Straw man • The author suggests the US argues its First Amendment doesn't apply to Assange. It's questionable if this is truly the US government's position. More likely, the government holds that someone's First Amendment rights cannot be used as a defense for leaking military secrets that harmed national security (if it can be shown that this is indeed what Assange did).
- Slippery slope • The author argues that if the UK extradites Assange, it will set a dangerous precedent that could lead to the extradition of other journalists. This is a slippery slope argument, which assumes that because one thing has happened, something else similar but much worse will inevitably happen. The author presents no evidence to support this claim beyond the mere assertion of it.
- False dilemma • The author says that the only two options are for the UK to refuse to extradite Assange or to become a "servile satellite" of the US. This is a false dilemma because there are other options available, such as negotiating with the US to ensure that Assange is given a fair trial.
References
- Peter Hitchens (2024, Feb 14). We all have an interest in saving Julian Assange.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-13083233/PETER-HITCHENS-patriot-radical-saving-Julian-Assange-extradition.html
Disclaimer
Note that there being one or more apparent fallacies in the arguments presented in this article does not mean that every argument the arguer made was fallacious, nor does it mean there are not other arguments in existence for the same or similar position that are logically valid. Also note that checking for fallacies is not the same as verification of the premises the arguer starts from, such as facts that the arguer asserts or principles that the arguer assumes as the foundation for constructing arguments. For more about this, see our 'What is Fallacy Checking?'
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